and Don Jaime, but the cult, such as there is of it in Spain, is of the
"Platonic" order only,--to use the Spanish description of it, "a little
talk but no fight,"--and it may be classed with the vagaries of the
amiable people in England who amuse themselves by wearing a white rose,
and also call themselves "legitimatists," praying for the restoration of
the Stuarts.

The truth about the Carlist pretension is so little known in England
that it may be well to state it. Spain has never been a land of the
Salic Law; the story of her reigning queens--chief of all, Isabel la
Católica, shows this. It was not until the time of Philip V., the first
of the Bourbons, that this absolute monarch limited the succession to
heirs male by "pragmatic sanction"; that is to say, by his own
unsupported order. The Act in itself was irregular; it was never put
before the Cortes, and the Council of Castile protested against it at
the time.

[Illustration: A CORNER IN OLD MADRID]

This Act, such as it was, was revoked by Charles IV.; but the revocation
was never published, the birth of sons making it immaterial. When,
however, his son Ferdinand VII. was near his end, leaving only two
daughters, he published his father's revocation of the Act of Philip V.,
and appointed his wife, Cristina, Regent during the minority of Isabel
II., then only three years of age.

At no time, then, in its history, has the Salic Law been in use in
Spain: the irregular act of a despotic King was repudiated both by his
grandson and his great-grandson. Nothing, therefore, can be more
ridiculous than the pretension of legitimacy on the part of a pretender